Manchester City banned from Champions League for two seasons

International

14-02-2020, 19:10

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INA – SOURCES

Manchester City have been banned from the Champions League for the next two seasons by Uefa and fined €30m (£25m) after they were found to have seriously misled European football’s governing body and broken financial fair play rules.

The severity of the ban from both of Uefa’s elite club competitions, and the scale of the fine, reflects how seriously Uefa’s FFP compliance bodies consider the club to have breached the rules and code of conduct.

The “leaked” emails and documents appeared to show that City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, was mostly funding the huge, £67.5m annual sponsorship of the City shirt, stadium and academy by his country’s airline, Etihad.

One of the leaked emails suggested that only £8m of that sponsorship in 2015-16 was funded directly by Etihad, and the rest was coming from Mansour’s own company vehicle for the ownership of City, the Abu Dhabi United Group.